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Born in Hamilton, Ontario, to Freda and Les Burke who immigrated from England to Canada during World War II as part of the British Civilian Military Authority, Martyn Burke graduated from Royal York High School in Toronto, Ontario. He attended McMaster University, where he played on the football team, the McMaster Marauders, and graduated with a degree in Economics. After a brief stint working in television programming for a major advertiser, Burke paid his own way over to Viet Nam to work as a freelance journalist and photographer covering the war. His experience reporting on the Viet Nam War was the beginning of his writing and film making career and served as the background for his first novel, Laughing War which was short-listed for a Books in Canada First Novel Award.

After Viet Nam, Burke started writing, directing and producing documentaries for CBC Television winning a number of awards in Canada for his work. Among them are a Gemini Award for Best Documentary for Connections, a multi-part undercover report on the Mafia in Canada and America, and a Genie Award for his documentary, Witnesses, filmed inside the conflict zones of Afghanistan. Other conflict zone documentaries include The Week That Paddy Died, about the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Often Burke's work as a documentary filmmaker inspired his novels or films. His documentary The KGB Connections, resulted in his later novel, The Commissar's Report, a satirical story about Soviet and United States relations during the Cold War. Producing and directing a segment for CBS's West 57th about early black R and B legends Ruth Brown and Bo Diddley being cheated out of record royalties, led to his novel Ivory Joe, the story of a 1950s family being caught up in the turmoil of the music industry at the dawn of Rock and Roll.